VS 2008 and SourceSafe Q&A

My post about VS 2008 and the SourceSafe CTP generated lots of questions. I’ll do my best to answer all of them.

Q: Why wasn’t this information in the VS2008 README?A: It should have been. It was definitely in the Orcas Beta1 and Beta2 READMEs. I haven’t checked the RTM copy but if it was missing then that’s a mistake and I apologize.

Q: Is VSS2005 the official product for VS2008, or is there a VSS2008 around the corner?A: Yes, VSS 2005 is still the official source control product in the 2008 time frame. (Along with TFS 2008 of course.) There is no VSS 2008. As you’ve probably noticed, VSS does not ship every time Visual Studio does. For example, VSS 6.0 shipped way back in 1998 with the VB6/VC6 suite of products, and then shipped service packs (6.0c, 6.0d, etc.) with the next few Visual Studio releases. Will there be another major revision of VSS? That’s too far away to forecast — it depends on how the market looks in a few years.

Q: Does SourceSafe 6.0d work with Visual Studio 2008?A: SourceSafe 6.0d is not officially supported with VS 2008, nor with VS 2005 for that matter. However, it should be possible to get it working if you’re willing to accept some limitations. The quickest way is to run “regsvr32 ssscc.dll” from your VSS6\win32 folder.

Q: Where do I get VSS2005 anyway?A: If you have a Team Edition of Visual Studio 2005 or later, then VSS2005 is included in your license. It was included on the VSTS 2005 set of discs; you can also download it from MSDN. If you have a Professional Edition of Visual Studio or lower then you need to purchase VSS separately.

Q: What’s up with all the TLAs?A: I agree “VSS GDR CTP” is silly. In recent posts here and on the forums, I’ve taken to calling it simply “the SourceSafe CTP.” There’s no danger of being ambiguous, because I’m never doing a CTP again 😉 — contrary to Joel’s comment, it ended up requiring just as much testing as a real service pack, so there’s not much point. Ideally, I’d rather deliver fully-baked updates early and often than wait for another 64 bugs to pile up. Hopefully the DevDiv Hotfix Availability program will keep us moving in the right direction.

As for the final GDR, its official name will be “SourceSafe 2005 Update.” Much better. If we do another one, I’d like to see an even simpler naming scheme, such as “SourceSafe 2005b” -> “2005c” -> etc. Internal processes will probably still force us to call them GDRs, but there’s no reason to confuse the rest of the world. What do you think?

As for the final GDR, its official name will be "SourceSafe 2005 Update." Much better. If we do another one, I’d like to see an even simpler naming scheme, such as "SourceSafe 2005b" -> "2005c" -> etc.

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So why not start with "SourceSafe 2005a", "SourceSafe 2005b" -> etc

It’s pretty clear that “b” is newer that “a” but is not clear at all that “Update” is newer than “b”. How can you possible be certain that “Update” came before “b” and not after “b”? You can take an educated guess but it’s just a guess. No point on having people searching for build dates etc.

In reality it would probably be best to keep it simple and stick to the standard “SourceSafe 2005 SP1”, “SourceSafe 2005 SP2” etc.

Oh yeah, and what’s up with all this acronyms (TLA GDR CTP, etc, etc), this is very annoying to say the least, I which you guys put a link under those words pointing to their definition!

I agreed with Rene who said about the naming of VSS2005 Update, which should stick to the convention of VSS2005 SP1, SP2, etc. Unless Microsoft is sure that they will provide ONE and ONLY ONE VSS2005 Update !

I also agreed with Rene about those terms like GDR, TLA, it’s a bit annoying. CTP (Community Technology Preview) should be more understandable by most people !